All.  “We know it.”

Colleville.  “I defy you to know it!  I have been hunting for it ever since the accession of His Majesty to the thrones of France and of Navarre.  Last night I succeeded! but with what labor!  Madame Colleville asked me what was the matter.”

Dutocq.  “Do you think we have time to bother ourselves with your intolerable anagrams when the worthy Monsieur de la Billardiere has just expired?”

Colleville.  “That’s Bixiou’s nonsense!  I have just come from Monsieur de la Billardiere’s; he is still living, though they expect him to die soon.” [Godard, indignant at the hoax, goes off grumbling.] “Gentlemen! you would never guess what extraordinary events are revealed by the anagram of this sacramental sentence” [he pulls out a piece of paper and reads], “Charles dix, par la grace de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre.”

Godard [re-entering].  “Tell what it is at once, and don’t keep people waiting.”

Colleville [triumphantly unfolding the rest of the paper].  “Listen!

  “A H. V. il cedera;
  De S. C. l. d. partira;
  Eh nauf errera,
  Decide a Gorix.

“Every letter is there!” [He repeats it.] “A Henry cinq cedera (his crown of course); de Saint-Cloud partira; en nauf (that’s an old French word for skiff, vessel, felucca, corvette, anything you like) errera—­”

Dutocq.  “What a tissue of absurdities!  How can the King cede his crown to Henry V., who, according to your nonsense, must be his grandson, when Monseigneur le Dauphin is living.  Are you prophesying the Dauphin’s death?”

Bixiou.  “What’s Gorix, pray?—­the name of a cat?”

Colleville [provoked].  “It is the archaeological and lapidarial abbreviation of the name of a town, my good friend; I looked it out in Malte-Brun:  Goritz, in Latin Gorixia, situated in Bohemia or Hungary, or it may be Austria—­”

Bixiou.  “Tyrol, the Basque provinces, or South America.  Why don’t you set it all to music and play it on the clarionet?”

Godard [shrugging his shoulders and departing].  “What utter nonsense!”

Colleville.  “Nonsense! nonsense indeed!  It is a pity you don’t take the trouble to study fatalism, the religion of the Emperor Napoleon.”

Godard [irritated at Colleville’s tone].  “Monsieur Colleville, let me tell you that Bonaparte may perhaps be styled Emperor by historians, but it is extremely out of place to refer to him as such in a government office.”

Bixiou [laughing].  “Get an anagram out of that, my dear fellow.”

Colleville [angrily].  “Let me tell you that if Napoleon Bonaparte had studied the letters of his name on the 14th of April, 1814, he might perhaps be Emperor still.”

Bixiou.  “How do you make that out?”

Colleville [solemnly].  “Napoleon Bonaparte.—­No, appear not at Elba!”

Dutocq.  “You’ll lose your place for talking such nonsense.”